“It’s the way with life that those that ax little usually get less,” commented old Adam, “I ain’t sayin’ it’s all as it ought to be, but by the time the meek inherit the earth thar’ll be precious little left on it except the leavin’s of the proud.”

“Thar ain’t any way of cultivatin’ a proud natur when you’re born meek, is thar?” inquired his son.

“None that I ever heerd of unless it be to marry a meeker wife.  Thar’s something in marriage that works contrariwise, an’ even a worm of a man will begin to try to trample if he marries a worm of a woman.  Who’s that ridin’ over the three roads, young Adam?”

“It’s Abel Revercomb.  Come in an’ pass the time of day with us, Abel.”

But the miller merely shouted back that he had ridden to Piping Tree for a bottle of medicine, and went on at a gallop.  Then he passed from the turnpike into the sunken road that led to the mill, and the cloud of dust kicked up by his mare drifted after him into the distance.

In spite of the scene in church, Abel had felt no resentment against Judy.  He knew that she had made herself ridiculous in the eyes of the congregation, and that people were pitying him on account of her hopeless infatuation for the young clergyman, but because he was indifferent to her in his heart, he was able to look at the situation from an impersonal point of view, and to realize something of what she had suffered.  When Solomon had railed at her after the service, Abel had stopped him in indignation.

“If you can’t speak civilly to my wife, you can leave my house,” he said sharply.

“Good God, man!  Don’t you know she’s making a laughin’ stock of you?”

“That’s a lie!” Abel had replied curtly, and Solomon, with the craven spirit of all natural despots, had muttered beneath his breath that he “reckoned, after all, it must have been a sudden attack of sickness.”

Of the attack and its nature Abel had said no word after this even to Judy.  During that embarrassed walk out of the church, while she clung sobbing hysterically to his arm, he had resolved once for all that, even though her behaviour cost him his ambition, he would never stoop to reproach her.  What right, indeed, had he to reproach her when he loved Molly quite as madly, if not so openly, as she loved the rector?  It was as if he looked on Judy’s suffering through his own, and was therefore endowed with a quality of understanding which his ordinary perceptions would never have given him.

When he came in sight of the mill, the flash of red wheels caught his eyes, and he distinguished Mr. Mullen’s gig in the road in front of the door.  Having seen Judy as he rode by on his round of visits, the rector had stopped for a moment to inquire if she had entirely recovered her health.

“I was much concerned about her illness in church yesterday,” he remarked, turning to the miller.

“I didn’t know she was up,” replied Abel, observing the inflamed and swollen state of her features, which had apparently escaped the notice of Mr. Mullen.  “Oughtn’t you to have stayed in bed, Judy?” he asked kindly.